CWD on Game Farm

JS Online: Game farm deer had CWD

Portage County facility quarantined
By LEE BERGQUIST
lbergquist@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Oct. 10, 2008

A white-tailed deer kept at a game farm in Portage County has tested positive for chronic wasting disease.
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State Veterinarian Robert Ehlenfeldt said Friday that a 7 1/2 -year-old doe, killed on Sept. 20, had been infected with the fatal disease.

The animal was owned by Alligator Creek Whitetails near Junction City. State officials have quarantined the facility.

State regulations require that all farm-raised deer and elk 16 months or older must be tested after death. In this case, the deer had been “harvested,” according to the attending veterinarian, state officials said. But an exact cause of death was not immediately known.

An owner of the game farm would not comment Friday.

State officials were notified of the results on Thursday by the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.

The last case of chronic wasting disease in a captive animal population was January 2005 on a farm in Crawford County, said Donna Gilson, a spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

To date, 97 farm-raised animals on eight Wisconsin farms and hunting preserves have tested positive. That includes 82 on a single farm in Portage.

Deer, cattle have true animal magnetism

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Grazing cattle and sleeping deer tend to align their bodies along the North-South axis of the Earth's magnetic field, European researchers said on Monday, giving new meaning to the phrase animal magnetism.

Herdsmen and hunters have long known that cattle and sheep tend to face the same direction when grazing, but had believed they were simply positioning themselves according to prevailing winds or the sun's rays

Deer, cattle have true animal magnetism | Oddly Enough | Reuters

African J Ecol, OnlineEarly Articles (Abstract)

We measured the responses of ungulate grazers to roads by recording the density of dust on grasses and compared distance sampling of ungulates in Serengeti National Park (SNP), Tanzania. Data were collected on the east and west side of the Ngorongoro–Seronera main gravel road to test if road traffic and dust were important factors determining distribution patterns amongst grazers. Results indicate that dust increased progressively with traffic speed and volume during dry season. More dust was intercepted on the west than on the east side of the road mainly because of wind effects. Dust deposition (measured as density g grass g⁻¹ dust) was higher on short grasses than on long grasses during the dry and late-dry seasons than during the wet season, when paired perpendicular distances up to 300 m were compared. Mean number of observed grazer species indicated that most fed further from the west side of the road than from the east perhaps to minimize higher density of dust commonly spread on foliage up to 200 m away from the road. Despite that most grazers avoided road side grass shoulders, supporting the ‘dust aversion hypothesis’, the test predictions from the ‘road disturbance’ and the ‘road attraction’ hypotheses did not support the responsive behaviours of grazers toward roads.

Blackwell Synergy - African J Ecol, OnlineEarly Articles (Article Abstract)

Drowned Wildebeest Swept by the Mara River

 

Drowned Wildebeest are Seen After Being Swept by the Mara River

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KENYA: October 4, 2007

Drowned wildebeest are seen after being swept by the Mara river in Maasai Mara, Kenya's most famous game reserve.

An estimated ten thousand wildebeest, about one percent of their entire population, have drowned during their annual migration from Kenya's Maasai Mara to Tanzania's Serengeti Park.

Story by Cristina Gall

Photo by CRISTINA GALL

Planet Ark Environmental News Pictures: Drowned Wildebeest are Seen After Being Swept by the Mara River